“Newspapers? Hell, no! They didn’t even put Tiens in, when he was crushed by his tractor.”
“Uh huh? So it was entirely a local affair?”
“Correct.”
“Which means that only somebody living locally would know of Izimu’s unpunished guilt?”
“Correct again.”
Kramer put down his glass and took out a crumpled sheet of foolscap which was covered in linked nooses. “Originally there seemed to be no pattern in this case,” he said, smoothing the paper, “but Izimu has provided the key factor by making Witklip the center of activity. Let’s take each of the three other cases I’ve outlined to you-forgetting the tramp, for whom we still have no information-and keeping in mind all the time that we’re not dealing with an ordinary murderer. This man sees himself as a hangman, carrying out impersonal executions which the law has been unable to conduct itself.”
“That’s the bit I-”
“Shhh, Willie! Give the Lieutenant a chance, hey?”
“You’ll notice, gentlemen, that the victims all fell within the area of this someone’s experience. Izimu is the most obvious example, and close behind him comes Rossouw, the railway foreman. You did say that people came back talking about him, Piet?”
This carefully timed flattery won an eager nod.
“From what you’ve told me, young Vasari made himself very memorable as well the night of the barbecue-that ‘little angel’ stuff, remember?”
“Ja, only I don’t get the paper except on Sundays if I’m in Brandspruit, so it never rang a bell.”
“A churchgoer-which ties in on Rossouw again-might have recognized the name, though. Agreed?”
“It’s very possible, Lieutenant. There’s another thing to bear in mind, too: I was only around seven myself at the time.”
“Point taken. Can you say what the talk would have been like in the bar if someone had noticed this trial and told the others?”
“Phaw! I reckon some could have been quite upset; they’d certainly have wondered about it, not knowing him like I did.”
“What the other one did would seem unfair anyway,” Willie got in, actually concentrating for once on what was being said. “The CID should never have allowed it, in my opinion. I can see those three now, but Tommy? He was here a hell of a time without anything happening and-”
“When did he come up with his story about the mission school?” asked Kramer, moving swiftly off thin ice.
“Mission school?” Ferreira repeated. “Oh, when he shot up those kids, you mean?”
“I didn’t hear about that,” said Willie.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Kramer said with some cynicism. “That was one of Tommy’s big mistakes, so I don’t think Sarge Jonkers would want to impress you with it. He committed a mass murder for no reason at all.”
“You mean even though they were just-”
“Even though, Piet; the man we’re dealing with has a very literal mind, and murder is the taking of another human life.”
A small shudder shook Ferreira. “Then the chances are he must have been standing here, right in my bar!”
“Can you remember when?”
“When Tommy told us that one? It must have been-ja, I can tell you exactly: three barbecues ago, the same night it started to rain and the men left the womenfolk on the verandah and came in here. Tommy’d just got in from a walk.”
A sprint down from the Jonkers house, more likely, when rain had stopped play with a threat of the husband’s early return. A more interesting insight was to be had in the fact that this date coincided with Erasmus’s sudden nervousness.
“It’s logical,” Kramer reflected aloud, “that the hangman should see himself as a bit of a Supreme Court judge as well, and could have asked him some questions in private. I’ll get Mamabola to see if that servant girl was ever questioned by someone about Izimu’s identity, et cetera. Could give us an early lead.”
“What if it doesn’t, sir?”
“We’ve still got a lot else, Willie. Can I borrow your pen?”
Turning over the foolscap, he prepared to list the main factors as they emerged. “It’s too easy to just say this hangman bloke is cracked-we don’t know what started him on this, and there may be quite a few other cases, going much further back, we don’t know about. The man who put us on to this investigation was working under primitive circumstances. But certain things do seem self-explanatory or whatever, and they can help us track him down. Most importantly, he does not see himself as a murderer. By using all the ritual and the paraphernalia, he becomes as innocent as the state’s own executioner. In the same way, he exercises ultimate power without any responsibility for his actions, apart from seeing he does a good job.”
Willie scratched under an armpit. “You mean he likes hanging people, sir? Is that it?”
Kramer realized he’d slipped into pomposity and nodded. “Ja, although he might not be aware of it himself. Or then again, perhaps he was the victim of a terrible injustice and feels this compulsion-perhaps he thinks God is guiding him. We could make religiousness our first characteristic.”
1. “Good” Christian, he wrote.
“Secondly, we can assume that he has all the right trappings to go with his trade, gents. Not only would it be necessary for him mentally, but Doc Strydom says this standard of hanging isn’t what you could get with a washing line and a bar stool.”
2. Scaffold and gear.
“Of course, this stuff could be dismantled in between times, but certain conditions have to be met as regards the space available-could be in a barn or silo, for instance, if he hasn’t made it part of his house.”
“You can really see this guy, can’t you?” observed Ferreira, trying to hide a sneaking smile.
“It takes one to catch one,” Kramer said, giving the stock reply that the Widow Fourie had once suggested. “He won’t be a blatantly criminal type either, you’ll see.” Then he cut short the laugh by saying gruffly, “This stuff is crucial, as any other evidence may be hard to come by, and that’s why it stays among just the three of us for now. We’ll make skills our Point Three. The necessary information is not available to the general public, which is a really strong lead. Either he was once in the prisons department, or he has some means of access. Any ideas?”
“Hmmm.”
“Ja, Willie?”
“Well, I know a bit from when I was at police college and the blokes from Central used to come and play rugby. But I’ve never talked about it.”
“Piet?”
“Nothing offhand. Sorry.”
4. Assistant (one or more), wrote Kramer, twisting the paper round for them to read it.
“How can you know that?” Ferreira said, surprised.
“He dumped Tommy’s car when he dumped him, so someone must have helped with the other vehicle, the one he carries them around in. That’s on the evidence we have already. However, a hangman must have an assistant to be efficient, according to the Doc, and-”
“There are two of them?”
“How many killers were involved in the Vontsteen case? Or for something nearer to this, what about those mad bastards who buried all those kids in England? The Moors or whatever their name was? Conspiracy is nothing new, man, and the crazier the-”
“Why leave the bodies everywhere?” Willie demanded, driven by a conflict of reason to speak his mind, if a little slurrily.
“Gibbet,” said Kramer, only then slotting this into his hypothesis. “It’s what they used to do to hanged criminals to show the world what had happened to them. Highway robbers and pirates and suchlike. But the question you should be asking is: do you know two or more persons in this area that you automatically think of together? Strong ties, trust, old pals-have you got it?”
“Oom Jaap and Gladstone?” Ferreira murmured.
The pair of them guffawed, then explained that Gladstone was a wog foreman whom Oom Jaap Brenner allowed to sit beside him in the front of his lorry, instead of on the back.
“They’re always chatting together,” added Willie, “like Tarzan and the apes. We bluff you not.”